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Some thought-provoking quotes

Published: 19 June 2000(GMT+10)

Dear folks at CMI:

I was just reading Francis Schaeffer and I stumbled across a quote which I had ‘lost’ for about 20 years. It is in The Church at the End of the 20th Century, ch. 6, ‘The Threat of Silence’:

‘Modern man no longer expects that truth exists even in the scientific world. All we are left with is statistical averages. Once I was speaking of science to a British university audience. Suddenly a young man in the scientific world stood up. “Sir,” he said, “you don’t realize how much the scientific enterprise is only the upper-middle class doing science as a form of gamesmanship.” I am sure he is right …’

As I reread this passage, I remembered a transcript of a debate between Dr. Duane Gish of ICR and the late Isaac Asimov. At one point, Asimov stated that if one posited a transcendent Creator, then in his words, ‘the game is over’. In light of the first quote, Asimov’s statement suddenly struck me as meaning, ‘If a Creator God is in the picture, scientists will be required to be first and foremost seekers of truth, rather than engaged in the rather enjoyable activity of constructing elaborate hypotheses based on unproveable premises.’ What a dreary prospect this must have seemed to Mr. Asimov, who made his fame and fortune not primarily as a scientist, but as a teller of stories.

Regards,

D S